If you traveled back in time to mid-2000s Massachusetts, you’d get to see Obamacare being crafted in miniature, except with former Governor Mitt Romney standing in for President Obama.

"We're spending a billion dollars giving healthcare to people who don't have insurance," Romney said in 2006, the year he signed the law. "And my question was: Could we take that billion dollars and help the poor purchase insurance? Let them pay what they can afford. We'll subsidize what they can't."

The Massachusetts law included a requirement that individuals carry health insurance, subsidies for low-income people, and an expansion of Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor.

And it succeeded in achieving Romney’s goal of slicing the uninsured rate. The percentage of Massachusetts residents without health insurance fell from 7.4 percent in 2004 to 1.9 percent in 2010.

Years later, the Massachusetts law would serve as a model for the Affordable Care Act, making for the wonderfully cacophonous 2012 presidential-debate dig “Obamneycare.”

Much ink and many, many snide subtweets have been spilled over the question of whether Obamacare’s expansion of health insurance will actually generate health gains. Conservative health wonks have used the idea that “health insurance does not equal healthcare” to denounce the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.

But a new study of Massachusetts’ healthcare reform published in the Annals of Internal Medicine provides hope that the expansion of health coverage under Obamacare will, in fact, help people live longer and healthier lives.

For the study, the authors compared the mortality rate of people aged 20 to 64 in the years leading up to Massachusetts’ health reform (2001 to 2005) and after (2007 to 2010). They then compared Massachusetts counties with other, demographically similar counties in the U.S.

Annals of Internal Medicine

The results should embolden advocates of expanded health coverage: “In the first four years after Massachusetts instituted comprehensive health reform in 2006, mortality in the state decreased by 2.9 percent compared with similar populations in states that didn’t expand health coverage,” Harvard’s School of Public Health, whose Benjamin D. Sommers co-authored the study, said in a statement. “They estimated that Massachusetts’ health reform law, which provided near-universal coverage, has prevented approximately 320 deaths per year—one life saved for each 830 people gaining insurance.”

If the Massachusetts results are mirrored across the country, the same 3 percent decline in mortality would mean roughly 17,000 fewer premature deaths per year.

The study also found that the poor were especially likely to benefit from the overhaul, and the causes of death that the law helped prevent were ones that were most easily preventable and treatable.

“Massachusetts counties with lower median incomes and a higher percentage of uninsured adults before the law was passed—areas likely to have experienced the greatest increase in access to care under reform—gained the largest health benefits,” the statement reads. “In addition, the decline in mortality was nearly twice as large for minorities as it was for whites.”

In addition to living longer, Massachusetts residents also reported fewer cost-related barriers to care, more outpatient visits, and improvements in self-reported health after the reform was implemented.

This is consistent with a previous study showing better self-reported health in Massachusetts after the expansion of healthcare. And an earlier New England Journal of Medicine study found that other states that expanded Medicaid saw a 6.1 percent reduction in the death rate among adults younger than 65.

One thing to keep in mind is that expanding health coverage isn’t a panacea for all of our healthcare woes. A study of Oregon’s Medicaid expansion found that enrolling in the program caused people to use emergency rooms more, not less, even for treatable conditions. And while the Oregon residents who gained Medicaid coverage had better rates of diabetes detection, less depression, and less financial strain, they didn’t show any significant improvements in cholesterol or hypertension--two major markers of physical health.

The authors of the Massachusetts study also caution that the state’s results aren’t perfectly generalizable to the rest of the U.S. The state has fewer minorities, a higher average income, lower mortality, and more doctors per capita than most others.

Not all health insurance is created equal—it’s still much harder to access doctors with Medicaid than with private insurance. But Obamacare has so far added more than eight million people to private insurance rolls. This study adds evidence to what we already intuitively think is true about health access: It’s easier to see a doctor when you have an insurance card in your wallet, and it’s easier to live longer if you can see a doctor when you need to.

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Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.